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Blog Post 2: Sources of Scientific Information
Being privileged enough to have grown up with parents that are not only successful academically but saved many of their textbooks and literature, I had the opportunity to be exposed to such publications as The Origin of Species, The Anatomy Colouring Book, and Lucy at a young age. Our house is full of bookshelves containing everything from Nancy Drew to countless volumes of Anthropology journals. One book that has always been one of my favorites, although I never looked at it from an ecological standpoint until now, is The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved, by P.V. Glob. Originally published in 1965 in Denmark, The Bog People was later translated and published in the US in 1969 by the Cornell University Press. Although dated, it still provides an interesting account of how the peat bogs in Denmark preserved the bodies of unlucky victims of hangings, decapitations and most sensationally, ritualistic sacrifices.
The author, the late P.V. (Peter Vilhelm) Glob, was a Danish archaeologist, and worked as the Director General of Museums and Antiquities in Demark following a long career teaching, excavating and expediting (Glob, 1965). His long list of credentials and publications clearly mark him as an expert in his field, and the extensive bibliography located at the back of The Bog People indicate that the publication is Academic, but not peer-reviewed. I have chosen to classify it this way taking into account the publication date (1969) and the advancements in research that have been made on the subject in recent years. When The Bog People was first released, it was likely regarded as ‘Popular Science’ or ‘Public Science’, but is now valuable reference material for other archaeologists and biologists researching the fascinating subject of the Danish peat bogs. It is referenced in peer-reviewed material such as Maritime Archaeology (1978) by Keith Muckelroy, as well as A Focus on Peatlands and Peat Mosses (1992) by Howard Crum and Sandra Planesik.
